The city of Berkeley has released a "working draft" of the conversation between Peter Cukor and the Berkeley police dispatcher which was recorded on February 18. The document notes that "this is NOT a verbatim transcript..."
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St. Paul AME Church, on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley near the corner of Shattuck, has posted this video of their "Hoodie Sunday" observance in memory of Trayvon Martin, featuring Pastor Leslie R. White and members of the congregation:
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The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and The Bay Area News Project (BANP), which operates The Bay Citizen, today agreed to merge operations, pending a review by the California attorney general.
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Features

An ancient cherry tree on Sacramento Street just north of the North Berkeley BART station this week is popping into its annual glorious bloom. I once thought it must have been planted by someone in the small Japanese community that left so many private Japanese gardens in the neighborhood, but a box of yellowed newspaper clippings I discovered at the Bancroft Library suggests it is yet another unmarked legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
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Public Comment

Not surprisingly, today’s debut Supreme Court argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe for review.
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A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and read Matt Yglesias’ The Rent Is Too Damned High and Ryan Avent’s The Gated City back to back. Both were a pleasure to read, for their content, and for the opportunity to kick a couple of bucks to two of my fave bloggers behind an ennobling veil of commerce. As an avid reader of both authors’ online work, there were no huge surprises, but reading the ebooks took me deeper and inspired some more considered thought on their ideas. Ryan Avent and Matt Yglesias (and Ed Glaeser too!) are separate humans with their own identities and ideas. But these “econourbanists” share a core view, and I hope they will forgive me if I consider their work together. Although they arrive at a similar place, the two books take very different roads: Avent’s book is a bit wonkier and more economistic, focusing on the macro role of cities in enhancing productivity through economies of scale and agglomeration; Yglesias treats the same set of issues more polemically and with an emphasis on the personal, thinking about how individuals should expect to make a living in an increasingly service-oriented economy, the importance of accessible cities to the kind of prosperity he envisions, and the perils of any obstacle that makes urban life inaccessible (“the rent is too damned high!”). Read both!
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Editorial

The Berkeley City Council in its infinite wisdom passed, on an 8-1 vote, a new Downtown Area Plan with attendant zoning changes which are supposed to facilitate its execution. Eight of the councilmembers voted for it, with Kriss Worthington, who's been around the block all too many times, the only no vote.

Arreguin and Anderson, who should know better, spoke enthusiastically of the "community benefits" the plan is supposed to provide, though Anderson, perhaps older and wiser, expressed some apprehension that they might get forgotten in the end. Since five skyscrapers downtown are the big ticket item, it might be appropriate to dub it the “pie in the sky” plan, in honor of Woody Guthrie ’s Joe Hill's famous ditty, invoked in this space more than once: “There’ll be pie in the sky bye and bye.” The modern refrain would be a sarcastic “oh sure.”
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Arts & Events

An argument between two actors in poetic dialogue was the original basis of theatre. Whether Aeschlyus or Plato’s Dialogues, we revel in the deep ideas while we rejoice in the crafting of the argument and the fervor and wit with which it is delivered.
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Erling Wold's new opera, 'Certitude & Joy' (title from Pascal), blends the stories from Chapter 22 of Genesis, Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, with Lashaun Harris' s (of Oakland) 2005 drowning of her young sons at the Embarcadero in San Francisco from what she thought to be God's command. Staged by the ubiquitous Jim Cave (who also teaches at Laney), with six performers—singers, actors, dancers—'Certitude & Joy' plays with identity ... Lashaun, Abarham, God, Jesus—and Wold himself—all speak from various lips onstage.
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So you're of the belief that April Fools Day is a modern, 20th Century celebration? Think again. April Fools Day can be traced back to the 1500's under the reign of Charles IX and the change in the Gregorian Calendar. On this day in 1700 English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools Day by playing practical jokes on each other. April Fools Day of this year offers embarrassment of riches -- art, drama, music, etc. You'll be hard pressed to make choices given the attractive events out there.
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